How-To Geek

Back-to-school season is here, and getting ready for another semester can get expensive fast. Tuition and books are only part of the equation. You may also need a laptop, accessories, school supplies, and software for writing papers, creating projects, designing presentations, or completing coursework. All those costs add up quickly, so saving money wherever you can matters.

If your Netflix home page is doing its job, you've likely already seen that Kevin Hart's 72 Hours is at No. 1 on the U.S. Top 10 charts at the moment, and that a Liam Neeson action movie (In the Land of Saints & Sinners) from 2024 is up there, too. While both are solid picks for a fun movie night this week, there are, of course, loads more options.

One of the biggest box office hits of 2026 finally hits streaming services this week. Let's just say audiences still love listening to the King of Pop's treasure trove of hits, which is why it's our top recommendation this week. Right behind the music biopic is an emotional teen drama about a young girl who must grapple with a devastating revelation about her mother.

Mini PCs are often touted as the go-to device for a first-time homelabber. They sip power compared to a desktop while offering plenty of performance for self-hosted apps. However, many mini PCs are surprisingly expensive, especially for someone just dipping their toes into the hobby.

It may be one of the most commonly requested types of task, but it’s also one of the more awkward ones. Monitoring a folder to watch for file changes has plenty of practical applications, from image processing to disk management and more complex API programming.

Most Linux distros are intentionally minimal to avoid bloat, offering a fresh and clean environment. While this is a major perk, knowing what to install first can be tricky for newcomers. So, to help kickstart your journey, here are five essential apps that belong on every new Linux PC.

Last weekend marked the release of The Last House, a sci-fi thriller and one of the service's new movies this August. If you want to continue in the suspenseful genre, watch these three thrillers now available to stream in the U.S.

I ignored one of the oldest Pixel features on my phone for over a year, assuming it was just another background battery-draining feature with no real benefit. Then, I finally decided to enable Now Playing, and as it turns out, it's surprisingly a lot more useful than I expected.

One of the downsides of being an incessant tinkerer is that I regularly break things. Messing with my homelab or smart home can often cause things in my home to stop working. When the internet stops working, my family immediately blames me, so I set up an internet status page so they could see that it isn't always my fault.

For most of my computing life, Debian and Ubuntu have been my go-to Linux distros. That will likely stay the same, even as Fedora gains traction, likely because I'm not ready to uproot my life into a new distro. If I did have to start over, I'd look closely at Fedora, and here are the reasons why.

Transforming an old Fire Tablet into a Linux Terminal is a fun weekend project for modding and home lab enthusiasts. These are Android devices, after all, and once you remove some of the Amazon bloatware with a tool, you can unlock their potential. So, I did something I've been wanting to do for a while: install a Linux distro and actually use it on a modded Fire Tablet.

Buying a family SUV is about more than horsepower, screens, or how impressive it looks parked in the driveway. You want something that makes everyday life easier and doesn't leave you second-guessing your choice.

I've been doing DIY projects for well over 20 years at this point, and I've used tools from all sorts of brands. In my personal shop, I use RYOBI 18V and Milwaukee M12. Here are the 6 differences that actually matter between the brands from my personal experience.

For years, Toyota and Honda were the go-to names for cars that just keep running. Their long-standing reputation for reliability made them the default choice for many buyers.

As implausible as it may sound, I rarely give websites my actual card numbers when I shop online. Instead, I generate virtual debit cards, and it's become one of my favorite privacy tricks. Now, I figured out a way to use these same cards when I shop in person, thanks to Google Wallet.

If you live in the U.S., no longer have to jump through hoops to install a third-party Android app store on your phone. Weeks after Google loosened its policies, the first alternative shop is available through the Play Store.

Where I live, the weather is the default subject for small talk. Weather apps can give you a lot of information about your local weather conditions, but I wanted a better option. A cheap ESP32 project turned out to be far more useful than relying on my phone.

The relationship between the U.S. and China has been interesting to say the least. Politically, the two countries could not be more different, but economically there has been little choice but to engage in trade and business.

Everyone occasionally has problems with unusual file formats. Maybe you're a Windows and Android user who encounters an HEIC file on the internet, downloads an image expecting a JPG only to get a WebP, or simply needs a PNG converted into a JPG.

Is your Samsung Galaxy Watch struggling to make it through the day? There are plenty of tips and tricks out there for squeezing more battery life out of it, but if you've tried them all and still feel like you could use a little more juice, it's worth digging into the Galaxy Watch's developer mode. There are a few settings in there you can toggle that can give you a slight but real improvement in overall battery life.